"Good-night," he said, lingering at the door to look upon and enjoy the fruit of his perversity and malice. "When I start on that journey I mentioned to you I'll leave something for you and Herby—merely to show you how much I think of my own people—a little gift—a trifle! No—no!"—lifting his hand with smiling depreciation as Tressilvain began to thank him. "One must look out for one's own family. It's natural—only natural to make some provision. Good-night, Helen! Good-night, Herby. Portlaw and I will take you on at Bridge if it rains to-morrow. It will be a privilege for us to—ah—watch your game—closely. Good-night!"
And closed the door.
"What the devil does he mean?" demanded Tressilvain, peering sideways at his wife.
"I don't exactly know," she said thoughtfully, sorting the cards. She added: "If we play to-morrow you stick to signals; do you understand? And keep your ring and your fingers off the cards until I can make up my mind about my brother. You're a fool to drink American whisky the way you did yesterday. Mr. Portlaw noticed the roughness on the aces; you pricked them too deep. You'd better keep your wits about you, I can tell you. I'm a Yankee myself."
"Right—O! But I say, Helen, I'm damned if I make out that brother of yours. Doesn't he live in the same house as his wife?"
Lady Tressilvain sat listening to the uproar from the dogs as Malcourt left the garden. But this time the outbreak was only a noisy welcome; and Malcourt, on excellent terms with himself, patted every sleek, wet head thrust up for caresses and walked gaily on through the driving rain.
The rain continued the following day. Piloted by Malcourt, the Tressilvains, thickly shod and water-proofed, tramped about with rod and creel and returned for luncheon where their blunt criticisms on the fishing aroused Portlaw's implacable resentment. For they sneered at the trout, calling them "char," patronised the rather scanty pheasantry, commented on the kennels, stables, and gardens in a manner that brought the red into Portlaw's face and left him silent while luncheon lasted.
After luncheon Tressilvain tried the billiards, but found the game inferior to the English game. So he burrowed into a box of cigars, established himself before the fire with all the newspapers, deploring the fact that the papers were not worth reading.
Lady Tressilvain cornered Shiela and badgered her and stared at her until she dared not lift her hot face or open her lips lest the pent resentment escape; Portlaw smoked a pipe—a sure indication of smouldering wrath; Malcourt, at a desk, blew clouds of smoke from his cigarette and smilingly continued writing to his attorney:
"This is the general idea for the document, and it's up to you to fix it up and make it legal, and have it ready for me when I come to town.
"1st. I want to leave all my property to a Miss Dorothy or Dolly Wilming; and I want you to sell off everything after my death and invest the proceeds for her because it's all she'll have to live on except what she gets by her own endeavours. This, in case I suddenly snuff out.
"2d. I want to leave my English riding-crop, spurs, bridle, and saddle to a Miss Virginia Suydam. Fix it legally.
"3d. Here is a list of eighteen ladies. Each is to have one of my eighteen Chinese gods.
"4th. To my wife I leave the nineteenth god. Mr. Hamil has it in his possession. I have no right to dispose of it, but he will have some day.
"5th. To John Garret Hamil, 3d, I leave my volume of Jean DuMont, the same being an essay on Friendship.
"6th. To my friend, William Van Bueren Portlaw, I leave my dogs, rods, and guns with a recommendation that he use them and his legs.
"7th. To my sister, Lady Tressilvain, I leave my book of comic Bridge rules, and to her husband a volume of Methodist hymns.
"I'll be in town again, shortly, and expect you to have my will ready to be signed and witnessed. One ought always to be prepared, particularly when in excellent health.
"Yours sincerely,"LOUIS MALCOURT."
"P.S. I enclose a check for the Greenlawn Cemetery people. I wish you'd see that they keep the hedge properly trimmed around my father's plot and renew the dead sod where needed. I noticed that one of the trees was also dead. Have them put in another and keep the flowers in good shape. I don't want anything dead around that lot.
"L.M."
When he had sealed and directed his letter he looked around the silent room. Shiela was sewing by the window. Portlaw, back to the fire, stood staring out at the rain; Lady Tressilvain, a cigarette between her thin lips, wandered through the work-shop and loading-room where, from hooks in the ceiling, a thicket of split-cane rod-joints hung, each suspended by a single strong thread.
The loading-room was lined with glass-faced cases containing fowling-pieces, rifles, reels, and the inevitable cutlery and ironmongery associated with utensils for the murder of wild creatures. Tressilvain sat at the loading-table to which he was screwing a delicate vise to hold hooks; for Malcourt had given him a lesson in fly-tying, and he meant to dress a dozen to try on Painted Creek.
So he sorted snell and hook and explored the tin trunk for hackles, silks, and feathers, up to his bony wrists in the fluffy heap of brilliant plumage, burrowing, busy as a burying beetle under a dead bird.
Malcourt dropped his letter into the post-box, glanced uncertainly in the direction of his wife, but as she did not lift her head from her sewing, turned with a shrug and crossed the floor to where Portlaw stood scowling and sucking at his empty pipe.
"Look at that horrid little brother-in-law of mine with his ferret eyes and fox face, fussing around those feathers—as though he had just caught and eaten the bird that wore them!"
Portlaw continued to scowl.
"Suppose we take them on at cards," suggested Malcourt.
"No, thanks."
"Why not?"
"They've taken a thousand out of me already."
Malcourt said quietly: "You've never before given such a reason for discontinuing card-playing. What's your real reason?"
Portlaw was silent.
"Did you quit a thousand to the bad, Billy?"
"Yes, I did."
"Then why not get it back?"
"I don't care to play," said Portlaw shortly.
The eyes of the two men met.
"Are you, by any chance, afraid of our fox-faced guest?" asked Malcourt suavely.
"I don't care to give any reason, I tell you."
"That's serious; as there could be only one reason. Did you think you noticed—anything?"
"I don't know what I think.... I've half a mind to stop payment on that check—if that enlightens you any."
"There's an easier way," said Malcourt coolly. "You know how it is in sparring? You forecast what your opponent is going to do and you stop him before he does it."
"I'm not certain that he—did it," muttered Portlaw. "I can't afford to make a mistake by kicking out your brother-in-law."
"Oh, don't mind me—"
"I wouldn't if I were sure.... I wish I had that thousand back; it drives me crazy to think of losing it—in that way—"
"Oh; then you feel reasonably sure—"
"No, confound it.... The backs of the aces were slightly rough—but I can scarcely believe—"
"Have you a magnifying glass?"
The pack has disappeared.... I meant to try that."
"My dear fellow," said Malcourt calmly, "it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest to learn that Tressilvain is a blackguard. It's easy enough to get your thousand back. Shall we?"
"How?"
Malcourt sauntered over to a card table, seated himself, motioned Portlaw to the chair opposite, and removed the cover from a new pack.
Then, to Portlaw's astonishment, he began to take aces and court cards from any part of the pack at his pleasure; any card that Portlaw called for was produced unerringly. Then Malcourt dealt him unbelievable hands—all of a colour, all of a suit, all the cards below the tens, all above; and Portlaw, fascinated, watched the dark, deft fingers nimbly dealing, shuffling, until his senses spun round; and when Malcourt finally tore up all the aces, and then, ripping the green baize cover from the table, disclosed the four aces underneath, intact, Portlaw, petrified, only stared at him out of distended eyes.
"Those are nice tricks, aren't they?" asked Malcourt, smiling.
"Y-yes. Lord! Louis, I never dreamed you could do such devilish things as—"
"I can. If I were not always behind you in my score I'd scarcely dare let you know what I might do if I chose.... How far ahead is that little mink, yonder?"
"Tressilvain?"
"Yes."
"He has taken about a thousand—wait!" Portlaw consulted his note-book, made a wry face, and gave Malcourt the exact total.
Malcourt turned carelessly in his chair.
"O Herbert!" he called across to his brother-in-law; "don't you and Helen want to take us on?"
"Rather!" replied Tressilvain briskly; and came trotting across the room, his close-set black eyes moving restlessly from Malcourt to Portlaw.
"Come on, Helen," said Malcourt, drawing up a chair for her; and his sister seated herself gracefully. A moment later the game began, Portlaw passing it over to Malcourt, who made it no trumps, and laid out all the materials for international trouble, including a hundred aces.
The games were brutally short, savage, decisive; Tressilvain lost countenance after the fastest four rubbers he had ever played, and shot an exasperated glance at his wife, who was staring thoughtfully at her brother.
But that young man appeared to be in an innocently merry mood; he gaily taunted Herby, as he chose to call him, with loss of nerve; he tormented his sister because she didn't seem to know what Portlaw's discards meant; and no wonder, because he discarded from an obscure system taught him by Malcourt. Also, with a malice which Tressilvain ignored, he forced formalities, holding everybody ruthlessly to iron-clad rule, taking penalties, enforcing the most rigid etiquette. For he was one of those rare players who knew the game so thoroughly that while he, and the man he had taught, often ignored the classics of adversary play, the slightest relaxing of etiquette, rule, precept, or precedent, in his opponents, brought him out with a protest exacting the last item of toll for indiscretion.
Portlaw was perhaps the sounder player, Malcourt certainly the more brilliant; and now, for the first time since the advent of the Tressilvains, the cards Portlaw held were good ones.
"What a nasty thing to do!" said Lady Tressilvain sharply, as her brother's finesse went through, and with it another rubber.
"It was horrid, wasn't it, Helen? I don't know what's got into you and Herby"; and to the latter's protest he added pleasantly: "You talk like a bucket of ashes. Go on and deal!"
"A—what!" demanded Tressilvain angrily.
"It's an Americanism," observed his wife, surveying her cards with masked displeasure and making it spades. "Louis, I never held such hands in all my life," she said, displaying the meagre dummy.
"Do you good, Helen. Mustn't be too proud and haughty. No, no! Good for you and Herby—"
"I wish you wouldn't call him Herby," snapped his sister.
"Not respectful?" inquired Malcourt, lifting his eyebrows. "Well, I'll call him anything you like, Helen; I don't care. But make it something I can say when ladies are present—"
Tressilvain's mink-like muzzle turned white with rage. He didn't like to be flouted, he didn't like his cards, he didn't like to lose money. And he had already lost a lot between luncheon and the impending dinner.
"Why the devil I continue to hold all these three-card suits I don't know," he said savagely. "Isn't there another pack in the house?"
"There was" said Malcourt; and ironically condoled with him as Portlaw accomplished a little slam in hearts.
Then Tressilvain dealt; and Malcourt's eyes never left his brother-in-law's hands as they distributed the cards with nervous rapidity.
"Misdeal," he said quietly.
"What?" demanded his sister in sharp protest.
"It's a misdeal," repeated Malcourt, smiling at her; and, as Tressilvain, half the pack suspended, gazed blankly at him, Malcourt turned and looked him squarely in the eye. The other reddened.
"Too bad," said Malcourt, with careless good-humour, "but one has to be so careful in dealing the top card, Herby. You stumble over your own fingers; they're too long; or perhaps it's that ring of yours."
A curious, almost ghastly glance passed involuntarily between the Tressilvains; Portlaw, who was busy lighting a cigar, did not notice it, but Malcourt laughed lightly and ran over the score, adding it up with a nimble accuracy that seemed to stun his relatives.
"Why, look what's here!" he exclaimed, genially displaying a total that, added, balanced all Portlaw's gains and losses to date. "Why, isn't that curious, Helen! Right off the bat like that!—cricket-bat," he explained affably to Tressilvain, who, as dinner was imminent, had begun fumbling for his check-book.
At Malcourt's suave suggestion, however, instead of drawing a new check he returned Portlaw's check. Malcourt took it, tore it carefully in two equal parts.
"Half for you, William, half for me," he said gaily. "My—my! What strange things do happen in cards—and in the British Isles!"
The dull flush deepened on Tressilvain's averted face, but Lady Tressilvain, unusually pale, watched her brother persistently during the general conversation that preceded dressing for dinner.
CHAPTER XXVI
SEALED INSTRUCTIONS
After the guests had gone away to dress Portlaw looked inquiringly at Malcourt and said: "That misdeal may have been a slip. I begin to believe I was mistaken after all. What do you think, Louis?"
Malcourt's eyes wandered toward his wife who still bent low over her sewing. "I don't think," he said absently, and sauntered over to Shiela, saying:
"It's rather dull for you, isn't it?"
She made no reply until Portlaw had gone upstairs; then looking around at him:
"Is there any necessity for me to sit here while you play cards this evening?"
"No, if it doesn't amuse you."
Amuse her! She rested her elbow on the window ledge, and, chin on hand, stared out into the gray world of rain—the world that had been so terribly altered for her for ever. In the room shadows were gathering; the dull light faded. Outside it rained over land and water, over the encircling forest which walled in this stretch of spectral world where the monotony of her days was spent.
To the sadness of it she was slowly becoming inured; but the strangeness of her life she could not yet comprehend—its meaningless days and nights, its dragging hours—and the strange people around her immersed in their sordid pleasures—this woman—her husband's sister, thin-lipped, hard-featured, drinking, smoking, gambling, shrill in disputes, merciless of speech, venomously curious concerning all that she held locked in the privacy of her wretchedness.
"Shiela," he said, "why don't you pay your family a visit?"
She shook her head.
"You're afraid they might suspect that you are not particularly happy?"
"Yes.... It was wrong to have Gray and Cecile here. It was fortunate you were away. But they saw the Tressilvains."
"What did they think of 'em?" inquired Malcourt.
"What do you suppose they would think?"
"Quite right. Well, don't worry. Hold out a little longer. This is a ghastly sort of pantomime for you, but there's always a grand transformation scene at the end. Who knows how soon the curtain will rise on fairyland and the happy lovers and all that bright and sparkling business? Children demand it—must have it.... And you are very young yet."
He laughed, seeing her perplexed expression.
"You don't know what I mean, do you? Listen, Shiela; stay here to dinner, if you can stand my relatives. We won't play cards. You'll really find it amusing I think."
"Do you wish me to stay?"
"Yes, I do. I want you to see something."
A few moments afterward she took her umbrella and waterproof and went away to dress, returning to a dinner-table remarkable for the silence of the diners. Something, too, had gone wrong with the electric plant, and after dinner candles were lighted in the living-room. Outside it rained heavily.
Malcourt sat beside his wife, smoking, and, unaided, sustaining what conversation there was; and after a while he rose, dragged a heavy, solid wooden table to the middle of the room, placed five chairs around it, and smilingly invited Shiela, the Tressilvains, and Portlaw to join him.
"A seance in table-tipping?" asked his sister coldly. "Really, Louis, I think we are rather past such things."
"I never saw a bally table tip," observed Tressilvain. "How do you do it, Louis?"
"I don't; it tips. Come, Shiela, if you don't mind. Come on, Billy."
Tressilvain seated himself and glanced furtively about him.
"I dare say you're all in this game," he said, with a rattling laugh.
"It's no game. If the table tips it tips, and our combined weight can't hold it down," said Malcourt. "If it won't tip it won't, and I'll bet you a hundred dollars that you can't tip it, Herby."
Tressilvain, pressing his hands hard on the polished edge, tried to move the table; then he stood up and tried. It was too heavy and solid, and he could do nothing except by actually lifting it or by seizing it in both hands and dragging it about.
One by one, reluctantly, the others took seats around the table and, as instructed by Malcourt, rested the points of their fingers on the dully polished surface.
"Does it really ever move?" asked Shiela of Malcourt.
"It sometimes does."
"What's the explanation?" demanded Portlaw, incredulously; "spirits?"
"I don't think anybody here would credit such an explanation," said Malcourt. "The table moves or it doesn't. If it does you'll see it. I'll leave the explanation to you, William."
"Have you ever seen it move?" asked Shiela, turning again to Malcourt.
"Yes; so has my sister. It's not a trick." Lady Tressilvain looked bored, but answered Shiela's inquiry:
"I've seen it often. Louis and I and my father used to do it. I don't know how it's done, and nobody else does. Personally I think it's rather a stupid way to spend an evening—"
"But," interrupted Portlaw, "there'll be nothing stupid about it if the table begins to tip up here under our very fingers. I'll bet you, Louis, that it doesn't. Do you care to bet?"
"Shouldn't the lights be put out?" asked Tressilvain.
Malcourt said it was not necessary, and cautioned everybody to sit absolutely clear of the table, and to rest only the tips of the fingers very lightly on the surface.
"Can we speak?" grinned Portlaw.
"Oh, yes, if you like." A bright colour glowed in Malcourt's face; he looked down dreamily at the top of the table where his hands touched. A sudden quiet fell over the company.
Shiela, sitting with her white fingers lightly brushing the smooth mahogany, bent her head, mind wandering; and her thoughts were very far away when, under her sensitive touch, a curious quiver seemed to run through the very grain of the wood.
"What's that!" exclaimed Portlaw.
Deep in the wood, wave after wave of motion seemed to spread until the fibres emitted a faint splintering sound. Then, suddenly, the heavy table rose slowly, the end on which Shiela's hands rested sinking; and fell back with a solid shock.
"That's—rather—odd!" muttered Tressilvain. Portlaw's distended eyes were fastened on the table, which was now heaving uneasily like a boat at anchor, creaking, cracking, rocking under their finger-tips. Tressilvain rose from his chair and tried to see, but as everybody was clear of the table, and their fingers barely touched the top, he could discover no visible reason for what was occurring so violently under his very pointed nose.
"It's like a bally earthquake," he said in amazement. "God bless my soul! the thing is walking off with us!"
Everybody had risen from necessity; chairs were pushed back, skirts drawn aside as the heavy table, staggering, lurching, moved out across the floor; and they all followed, striving to keep their finger-tips on the top.
Portlaw was speechless; Shiela pale, tremulous, bewildered; Tressilvain's beady eyes shone like the eyes of a surprised rat; but his wife and Malcourt took it calmly.
"The game is," said Malcourt, "to ask whether there is a spirit present, and then recite the alphabet. Shall I?… It isn't frightening you, is it, Shiela?"
"No.... But I don't understand why it moves."
"Neither does anybody. But you see it, feel it. Nor can anybody explain why an absurd question and reciting the alphabet sometimes results in a coherent message. Shall I try it, Helen?"
His sister nodded indifferently.
There was a silence, then Malcourt, still standing, said quietly:
"Is there a message?"
From the deep, woody centre of the table three loud knocks sounded—almost ripped out, and the table quivered in every fibre.
"Is there a message for anybody present?"
Three raps followed in a startling volley.
"Get the chairs," motioned Malcourt; and when all were seated clear of the table but touching lightly the surface with their finger-tips:
"A B C D E F"—began Malcourt, slowly reciting the alphabet; and, as the raps rang out, sig-nalling some letter, he began again in a monotonous voice: "A B C D E F G"—pausing as soon as the raps arrested him at a certain letter, only to begin again.
"Get a pad and pencil," whispered Lady Tressilvain to Shiela.
So Shiela left the table, found a pad and pencil, and seated herself near a candle by the window; and as each letter was rapped out by the table, she put it down in order.
The recitation seemed endless; Malcourt's voice grew hoarse with the repetition; letter after letter was added to the apparently meaningless sequence on Shiela's pad.
"Is there any sense in it so far?" asked Lady Tressilvain.
"I cannot find any," said Shiela, striving with her pencil point to divide the string of letters into intelligible words.
And still Malcourt's monotonous voice droned on, and still the raps sounded from the table. Portlaw hung over it as though hypnotized; Tressilvain had fallen to moistening his lips with the tip of his tongue, stealthy eyes always roaming about the candle-lit room as though searching for something uncanny lurking in the shadows.
Shiela shivered, wide-eyed, as she sat watching the table which was now snapping and cracking and heaving under her gaze. A slow fear of the thing crept over her—of this senseless, lifeless mass of wood, fashioned by human hands. The people around it, the room, the house were becoming horrible to her; she loathed them and what they were doing.
A ripping crash brought her to her feet; everybody sprang up. Under their hands the table was shuddering convulsively. Suddenly it split open as though rent by a bolt, and fell like a live thing in agony, a mass of twisted fibres protruding like viscera from its shattered core.
Stunned silence; and Malcourt turned to his sister and spoke in a low voice, but she only shook her head, shivering, and stared at the wreck of wood as though revolted.
"W-what happened?" faltered Portlaw, bewildered.
"I don't know," said Malcourt unsteadily.
"Don't know! Look at that table! Why, man, it's—it's dying!"
Tressilvain stood as though stupefied. Malcourt walked slowly over to where Shiela stood.
She shrank involuntarily away from him as he bent to pick up the pad which had fallen from her hands.
"There's nothing to be frightened about," he said, forcing a smile; and, holding the pad under the light, scanned it attentively. His sister came over to him, asking if the letters made any sense.
He shook his head.
They studied it together, Shiela's fascinated gaze riveted on them both. And she saw Lady Tressilvain's big eyes widen as she laid her pencil on a sequence; saw Malcourt's quick nod of surprised comprehension when she checked off a word, then another, another, another; and suddenly her face turned white to the lips, and she caught at her brother's arm, terrified.
"Will you keep quiet?" he whispered fiercely, snatching the sheet from the pad and crumpling it into his palm.
Sister and brother faced each other; in his eyes leaped a flame infernal which seemed to hold her paralyzed for a moment; then, with a gesture, she swept him aside, and covering her eyes with her hands, sank into a chair.
"What a fool you are!" he said furiously, bending down beside her. "It's in us both; you'll do it, too, when you are ready—if you have any sporting blood in you!"
And, straightening up impatiently, his eyes fell on Shiela, and he shrugged his shoulders and smiled resignedly.
"It's nothing. My sister's nerves are a bit upset.... After all, this parlour magic is a stupid mistake, because there's always somebody who takes it seriously. It's only humbug, anyway; you know that, don't you, Shiela?"
He untwisted the paper in his hand and held it in the candle flame until it burned to cinders.
"What was there on that paper?" asked Shiela, managing to control her voice.
"Why, merely a suggestion that I travel," he said coolly. "I can't see why my sister should make a fool of herself over the idea of my going on a journey. I've meant to, for years—to rest myself. I've told you that often, haven't I, Shiela?"
She nodded slowly, but her eyes reverted to the woman crouching in the chair, face buried in her brilliantly jewelled hands. Portlaw and Tressilvain were also staring at her.
"You'd better go to bed, Helen," said Malcourt coolly; and turned on his heel, lighting a cigarette.
A little later the Tressilvains and Shiela started across the lawn to their own apartments, and Malcourt went with them to hold an umbrella over his wife.
In the lower hall they separated with scarcely a word, but Malcourt detained his brother-in-law by a significant touch on the arm, and drew him into the library.
"So you're leaving to-morrow?" he asked.
"What?" said Tressilvain.
"I say that I understand you and Helen are leaving us to-morrow."
"I had not thought of leaving," said Tressilvain.
"Think again," suggested Malcourt.
"What do you mean?"
Malcourt walked up very close and looked him in the face.
"Must I explain?" he asked contemptuously. "I will if you like—you clumsy card-slipping, ace-pricking blackguard!… The station-wagon will be ready at seven. See that you are, too. Now go and tell my sister. It may reconcile her to various ideas of mine."
And he turned and, walking to a leather-covered chair drawn up beside the library table, seated himself and opened a heavy book.
Tressilvain stood absolutely still, his close-set eyes fairly starting from his face, in which not a vestige of colour now remained; and when at length he left the room he left so noiselessly that Malcourt did not hear him. However, Malcourt happened to be very intent upon his own train of thought, so absorbed, in fact, that it was a long while before he looked up and around, as though somebody had suddenly spoken his name.
But it was only the voice which had sounded so often and familiarly in his ears; and he smiled and inclined his graceful head to listen, folding his hands under his chin.
He seemed very young and boyish, there, leaning both elbows on the library table, head bent expectantly as he listened, or lifted when he, in turn, spoke aloud. And sometimes he spoke gravely, argumentatively, sometimes almost flippantly, and once or twice his laugh rang out through the empty room.
In the forest a heavy wind had risen; somewhere outside a door or shutter banged persistently. He did not hear it, but Shiela, sleepless in her room above, laid down Hamil's book; then, thinking it might be the outer door left carelessly unlocked, descended the stairs with lighted candle. Passing the library and hearing voices she halted, astonished to see her husband there alone; and as she stood, perplexed and disturbed, he spoke as though answering a question. But there was no one there who could have asked it; the room was empty save for that solitary figure. Something in his voice terrified her—in the uncanny monologue which meant nothing to her—in his curiously altered laugh—in his intent listening attitude. It was not the first time she had seen him this way.
"Louis!" she exclaimed; "what are you doing?"
He turned dreamily toward her, rose as in a trance.
"Oh, is it you?… Come in here."
"I cannot; I am tired."
"So am I, Shiela—tired to death. What time is it?"
"After ten, I think—if that clock is right."
She entered, reluctant, uncertain, peering up at the clock; then:
"I thought the front door had been left open and came down to lock it. What are you doing here at this hour? I—I thought I heard you talking."
"I was talking to my father."
"What!" she said, startled.
"Pretending to," he added wearily; "sit down."
"Do you wish me—"
"Yes; sit down."
"I—" she looked fearfully at him, hesitated, and slowly seated herself on the arm of a lounge. "W-what is it you—want, Louis?" she faltered, every nerve on edge.
"Nothing much; a kindly word or two."
"What do you mean? Have I ever been unkind? I—I am too unhappy to be unkind to anybody." Suddenly her eyes filled.
"Don't do that," he said; "you are always civil to me—never unkind. By the way, my relatives leave to-morrow. That will comfort you, won't it?"
She said nothing.
He leaned heavily on the table, dark face framed in both hands:
"Shiela, when a man is really tired, don't you think it reasonable for him to take a rest—and give others one?"
"I don't understand."
"A rather protracted rest is good for tired people, isn't it?"
"Yes, if—"
"In fact," with a whimsical smile, "a sort of endlessly eternal rest ought to cure anybody. Don't you think so?"
She stared at him.
"Do you happen to remember that my father, needing a good long rest, took a sudden vacation to enjoy it?"
"I—I—don't know what you mean!"—tremulously.
"You remember how he started on that restful vacation which he is still enjoying?"
A shudder ran over her. She strove to speak, but her voice died in her throat.
"My father," he said dreamily, "seems to want me to join him during his vacation—"
"Louis!"
"What are you frightened about? It's as good a vacation as any other—only one takes no luggage and pays no hotel bills.... Haven't you any sense of humour left in you, Shiela? I'm not serious."